


[Redacted]

by MellytheHun



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Derek Hale is Bad at Feelings, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pack Dynamics, Pack Family, Pining, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23059426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MellytheHun/pseuds/MellytheHun
Summary: Letting out one bitter laugh, Stiles pretends he’s not crying, and says, “yeah, well, it started as a tiny thing, just a - this little - barely even a thing, you know? And I thought if I left it alone, it’d go away, but instead it became this fucking e-enormous, colossal - it’s the most - the most - important thing in the entire fucking world, and it’s like I planted a seed in the woods somewhere, like, three years ago, and now it’s all -”“A garden,” Derek realizes, his eyes going round in Stiles’ periphery.Stiles wipes at his cheeks with the back of his hand, and looks down at his dirty knees, “yeah. Didn’t fade. Just changed.”
Relationships: Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 99
Kudos: 1069





	[Redacted]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kchayes54](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kchayes54/gifts).



> Hey! This is a donation fic, I need help with medical bills, and if ya feel like helping me out, hit me up on Twitter or Tumblr (loserchildhotpants)!
> 
> The prompt for this fic was First Kiss + grown up Stiles, with some emotional pining thrown in for good measure. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy! <3

There are a lot of things Stiles would keep off the record if given the choice, and there’s more to that than just that his father taught him that keeping his mouth shut is a valuable life skill.

Stiles also realizes the irony in that he talks too much, typically, but still manages to practice censorship. He knows he has the right to remain silent, but what’s the fun in that when he can omit everything of import while still overflowing with information? All of it useless? Nearly useless. He’s killer at trivia night.

He talks, sure, but he’s good at keeping what he wants to keep close to the chest right where he needs it. He likes to _seem_ like an open book, and he can be (especially if he’s just gone under for surgery, apparently, as Isaac’s video of him post-wisdom-teeth-removal is anything to go by), but it’s mostly to keep people from prying into _private_ files, because it creates this false sense of security, this idea that Stiles doesn’t have private files, so there are none to look for. 

He talks, he likes talking, but he shares only what he’s okay with being public knowledge.

There are so many things in Stiles’ life that he won’t own up to - like, he doesn’t like people knowing his first name, as he hates watching people roll it around in their clumsy mouths like a bunch of oblong marbles have been stuffed in there, and he has hated it so much in the past that he has ruined several Social Security cards by using a sharpie to block out his name which nine-year-old Stiles thought was fucking genius.

His college applications featured ‘[redacted]’ a lot more than the rest of the Pack’s applications.

Like, in that no one else did that at all, aside from him, but whatever. Stiles has every right to privacy.

There are other things too, that he won’t disclose, not just that sort of stuff, that probably-should-see-a-specialist-about-it stuff - he still won’t admit that for a full month he moved everything in Scott’s room a fraction of an inch to the left every time he visited (Scott really lost his mind over it, convinced the house was tilting), he won’t admit that he was the person that stole a single button from all of Jackson’s collared shirts, and although everyone figured out he was the one leaving worn out Furbies around the loft at random, changing locations to make it appear that the house was suffering an infestation or haunting, he did not disclose how much he spent on them.

(it was too much - like an embarrassing amount of money to spend, despite the prank being very rewarding.)

All of that being said, Stiles has never bothered denying, or hiding the fact that he is sort of, very slightly, almost, kind-of, a-little-teensy-bit, a _modicum_ , really, infatuated with Derek. It’s barely a blip on the radar. It’s so itty-bitty. But it is, unfortunately, a thing. Even though it’s a thing that is so barely in existence that it almost doesn’t qualify for perceivable measurement.

He doesn’t mind owning this particular thing - it’s always been a thing, after all, and all of his friends can fucking sniff out when he’s turned on, so it’s not like it’s worth trying to hide. And this thing he has for Derek? It doesn’t even bother him - that’s how Not Important a thing it is. 

Besides, Stiles is pretty sure everyone that has seen Derek’s expertly trimmed facial hair, seen his perfectly sculpted face with its intense brow and dramatic cheekbones - or everyone that’s watched him fight (even the ones he’s lost - which is, like, most of them, but still), watched him cock his enormous arm back and crush someone’s face with his fist - watched him emanate preternatural power, and embody magick - well… anyone that’s seen that stuff has likely had a little flutter in their chest for the man, and who could blame them? 

It seems ridiculous that Stiles would be the only one. And he isn’t. He knows that. People fall over themselves to get close to Derek, too, so it’s definitely not just Stiles. 

And there’s this legacy about Derek. He almost doesn’t seem real - this brooding, growly Full Moon Prince, this last standing Hale, this survivor, this man who’s turned a curse into a gift - he’s the type of angsty hero dorks like Stiles read about in graphic novels. 

He’s so larger than life, he has this energy about him, something more than an attitude or impression he gives, it’s this magick about him, and when he walks into the loft, or out into the woods, or he’s just walking down the sidewalk, he fills every space he walks into with such a a sense of importance, his solidness is so reassuring, so protective, it just draws everything in around him, because he radiates the sense of safety. 

So, yeah, Stiles is allowed to have a crush. 

Derek is this magnificent, legendary man made real, grumbling about shit like spells, and supernatural night life, climbing up the side of Stiles’ house, into his bedroom, welcoming himself in for research, and to drop news, or ask a question, all muscle, and alien-beautiful eyes, crouched in the window, splayed out in Stiles’ computer chair, making magick in Stiles’ formerly quiet, ordinary world, and not always meaning to.

Based on that alone, anyone might just go ahead and fall in love with him, but Stiles is safe from falling in love with Derek Hale because Derek also happens to be an arrogant, bullheaded, mean, noncommunicative, cranky, emotionally constipated moron who conveys his general disdain for all that lives and breathes almost solely through the movement of his ridiculous eyebrows. So. Yeah. _Not_ in love with Derek. Because that would be fucking absurd.

Not that _no one_ should be in love with Derek - over the years, Stiles has grown very close to Derek, actually, and he cares about Derek a lot. During high school, for Stiles, Derek was a real pain in the ass, and his crankiness and cruelty was totally disproportionate to the situations at hand (Derek would disagree, but Stiles would strike his testimony from the record, so who cares what he has to say?). 

In recent years, he’s cooled down a lot, though, and he’ll probably make someone a very happy partner, if he ever decides to like - wear shoes again, and like, talk to other people, out in the world, like functional folks do. 

Sometimes, during weekend visits to the loft, Stiles ventures to inquire after Derek’s love life, if there are any prospects, or if he’s like, going outside at all, ever making eye-contact with other human people, but all Derek says to him is a grumbly, “I know everyone I want to know.”

Which is such an Old Man thing to say, and it totally tracks for him. 

“What about all the people you’ve yet to meet, Derek?” Stiles asks oh-so eloquently, time and again, “What about all the people that could make you happy? What about making friends? What about meeting someone special? What about the importance of interpersonal fulfillment?” and all he gets is a roll of the eyes, like _he’s_ the one being unreasonable, and Derek muttering short variations of, “I don’t want any new people in my life. I hate people.”

He’s such a crotchety old man. 

Normally, that’d be enough to turn Stiles away, make Stiles say ‘hoo boy, you sure are boring! Pretending to be uninterested in happiness as a personality is so 2002!’ but the issue is that Derek’s broad strokes of dislike aren’t all his personality. Not at all.

Derek has a vast collection of secondhand books, he really likes historical fiction which Stiles thinks is just the strangest thing, but it’s also endearing that Derek’s a fucking werewolf that would choose to read about Abraham Lincoln being a vampire hunter, and Jane Austen being a bad ass with an axe, taking down hordes of zombies.

He’s spent the last three years getting his certification in Thanatology, just for shits and giggles, apparently, because he already has a Master’s degree in Engineering, which he uses for nothing at all, to Stiles’ continued bewilderment, and he double majored when getting his Bachelor’s at NYU with Philosophy and Physics, which he decided was only relevant to bring up to the Pack once everyone was already spread out over colleges, trying to iron their lives out. 

Isaac stayed home with Derek rather than go away to college, because he wants to go into Architecture, and Derek talked him into going to a nearby community college that offered a certification that would allow him to graduate as a valid, capable draftsman. From there, apparently, Derek is willing to partially fund Isaac’s Bachelor’s in Architecture, and help connect him to a firm he has ‘an acquaintance,’ at. Stiles had questions, but Derek was unwilling to extrapolate.

Danny is going into some very complicated science field, but regardless of his focus, he’s able to talk to Derek about theoretical physics, and the space program that Derek inexplicably knows a lot about, and when get they to talking about space travel, most of those conversations go straight over Stiles’ head, but Derek’s personality shines through in each one. 

When he is talking about something he’s studied well, he gesticulates more, his eyes and brows move more theatrically, and he loves the sound of Stiles cracking his joints for some reason, and he has a deeply personal hatred of Raisins and Ryan Seacrest, and he spends every Sunday cleaning his car. 

Derek loves his car, but he loves it more for what it does for him, rather than what it looks like - he takes it on long rides, sometimes to some Middle of Nowhere diner, just for the sake of saying he did it, sometimes to take the Pack on a trip for a holiday weekend, and sometimes he travels for sentimental reasons, sometimes for the sake of everyone’s safety, and sometimes he just does it because he knows it calms Lydia down to drive around town when she has panic attacks. 

He likes cooking shows, but doesn’t actually enjoy cooking, which he doesn’t consider odd at all, of course, he goes to the movies every Friday night whether or not there’s anything new, or anything he even wants to see because he loves being in theatres, he seems to prefer feminine vocalists in his music, and he’s something of a Consulting Alpha for Scott, who still finds himself in more than his fair share of trouble, which Stiles lovingly refers to as the blind leading the blind. Probably over a cliff, and into pirana infested waters.

“God, Scott, I swear you’d struggle to pour water out of your boot if the instructions on how were on the fuckin’ heel,” Derek once told Scott, and just when Stiles went to defend Scott’s honor, Scott gave Derek a Look and said, “I don’t wear boots?”

At which point, Stiles met Derek’s unimpressed stare, and left with no way to defend Scott, he shrugged back, with a defeated, “yeah, just - yeah.” 

So, yeah, Derek’s got a personality other than his unyielding disapproval of All Things, and he’s probably always going to be a grumpy asshole, he’s probably always going to be stubborn, and he will probably always have a pitiful winning ratio when it comes to fighting beasties of the night, but there are these times - times when these protective barriers come crumbling down, and Stiles is awe-struck. 

These times when Derek _smiles_ , rare as it is, and it’s this brilliant lightning-flash of white teeth, and his cosmic, technicolor eyes sparkling with life and humor, he’ll look so young, so free of that weight in his soul when he laughs, and Stiles should be used to it by now, because he’s known Derek for several years, but every time it happens, he’s bowled over by its sudden beauty. 

And stubborn, bullheaded, moronic, sure, but Derek still cares so intensely, even when he’s pretending not to, he cares so immediately, he cares so instantly, so unconditionally, so warmly, so fully, so completely, and deeply, and all of it comes out in his wolfish grin that sets something fluttery loose in Stiles’ chest every time it spreads over Derek’s face. 

He smiles, and it’s like he’s letting Stiles in on a secret, and the secret is this; ‘I care. I’ve always cared.’

And maybe Stiles is the reason he doesn’t want to meet new people - maybe he’s at capacity, because he can only love so much, and maybe Stiles is part of that big love inside Derek, maybe he’s an exception to the rule of ‘I hate people,’ and Stiles is someone he’d say he cares about in the way he says nothing at all when he’s laughing with his sharp canines and his twinkling eyes.

Typically, Stiles doesn’t let himself think on that part, though, because it’s much safer for it to be Not Important. It’s so much safer to look at Derek, see how perfect every line of his face is, wonder at the drama of his sculpture and strong frame, curl his toes in delight when Derek’s car pulls up the drive, to objectively understand that Derek Hale would sooner die than let anything happen to him, and not be In Love, just let it be ‘a thing,’ a blip on the radar, barely that, because anything more, and that’d be the worst possible thing to happen to Stiles.

It’s good, and true that Derek cares about them all, but he’s never seen Derek Hale _in love_ , and maybe that’s not something Derek can do, or wants to do, or even _should_ do - who knows what that would even look like, but Stiles will sometimes entertain the idea of ‘what if,’ this ‘what if it _wasn’t_ a tiny thing, and I _were_ in love with Derek and it was the biggest, most important thing in the entire world?’ and all he can think of as an answer to that question is the complete and utter collapse of everything around him. 

So, it’s not a big deal. It’s a thing. A tiny thing. Barely even a thing for how tiny a thing it is.

It’s just - sometimes, at times like now, when Derek is laying his life on the line for him, it doesn’t fully feel like a tiny thing, and he can see the writing on the wall, even under where he’s blocked it out with a black sharpie. 

And he’s so desperate for it _not_ to be important, for it to be itty-bitty, for it to be the same little thing he feels when he falls in love with every other beautiful person that walks into the same fucking room as him, he goes digging into the most private folders of his own heart, and everything on it is just [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], and it smells like Derek fucking Hale in there, it looks like a good fuckin’ case for the argument that maybe, just maybe, Stiles has let this tiny thing flourish into a cluster of tangled wildflowers, all the varied colors of Derek’s eyes, and there are so many colors there, so many multitudes inside Derek, and he wonders if, when he laughs in front of Derek, if Derek is ever able to hear a secret no one else hears, and if that secret’s damning, the way Derek’s is. 

If it’s more than Stiles could ever actually say.

“Say something.”

Blinking back the lights in his eyes from his head hitting the ground unexpectedly, Stiles looks up into Derek’s eyes, watches as the glow of scarlet bleeds from them, and then he’s looking into golds, silvers, blues, greens, and that seaform of hazel eyes, and his brows are pulled in tight, concentrating on Stiles, and Stiles is in the dirt, bleeding a little bit, but nothing feels broken.

Not, like, physically, anyway.

“I’m not dead.”

“You’re welcome,” Derek tells him flatly as one of Allison’s arrows goes flying over them both, eliciting an inhuman screech from the wendigo Stiles got clawed by.

“You think you’ll ever consider, like, gently moving me away from danger, instead of tackling me to the ground like a quarterback, or like, should I be consulting my insurance company about a good chiropractor?” Stiles asks, his right hand coming to touch at wear his jacket is torn on his left sleeve.

Mindlessly, Derek smacks his hand away, “don’t touch it. Your hands are dirty.”

With comically wide eyes, Stiles gapes and exclaims, “oh! Jesus Christ, sorry, Derek, I’ll make sure to wash thoroughly and get the fuckin’ Neosporin out before checking to see if the _tendons of my arm are still attached_.”

Derek rolls his eyes, and grumbles back, “your arm’s fine. It’s gonna scar, though.”

Switching gears quickly, Stiles celebrates with a quiet, “oh, sick,” - and then it happens. 

Derek laughs.

It’s a chuckle, it’s light - but the thing is, he’s fuckin’ haloed by the moonlight breaking through the trees, he’s all dirty, and bloody from fighting, his hair is sorta messy, and he looks like a comic book superhero, he’s so fuckin’ handsome, and intense, and his fangs are still descended, and his eyes crinkle at the corners with his smile, and the garden in Stiles’ chest cavity starts burgeoning at the sight.

“Why don’t - I mean - why don’t you wanna meet anyone new?” Stiles rasps out, his voice a reluctant whisper.

Watching Derek’s smile fade is like a bucket of ice water being poured down Stiles’ back. 

“Sorry - sorry - fuck - I know you don’t - it’s not - nevermind,” Stiles stammers, moving his weight around in a way that indicates that Derek no longer needs to bracket him in with his enormous arms, and can let him up off the ground.

“I have everyone I need.”

Unable to walk away from a situation where he has a ready comeback, Stiles rolls his eyes at Derek, and responds, “oh, come on, that’s such a cop-out, you can’t possibly know that. You don’t even have an emissary!”

“You take care of me when I get hurt.”

“I know!” Stiles answers defensively, looking away and feeling his face get hot, “But I’m not - I mean, I’m not… it’s not like that.”

“Right,” Derek tells him with a nod, “I know. You’re part of Scott’s Pack, and if anyone’s going to -”

“He chose Allison, actually.”

Stiles really does try to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“Oh,” Derek murmurs, “I see.”

“A-Anyway, you’re derailing us,” Stiles redirects, sitting up on his elbows, as Derek apparently seems pleased to just stay where he’s at, hovering over Stiles, “None of us like that you live alone -”

“I have Isaac.”

“He’s like an adoptive little brother, it’s not the same thing -”

“Erica and Boyd are there every weekend too.”

“Again, not the same thing as -”

“As what?” Derek intercepts, cocking a brow, “A spouse?”

“Well, Jesus, Derek, no one’s pressuring you to buy a ring or anything, but, basically… yeah.”

“The Pack is concerned I don’t have a partner, or you’re concerned?”

Blushing through his hairline, Stiles wiggles out from under the protective shield Derek’s made with his body, and as the rest of the Pack tackles, and destroys the wendigo a few feet away, Stiles brushes the dirt off his jeans, and tells Derek, “no - I - not me - I mean, not me alone, anyway, so, yeah, me a little, but it’s not like I -”

“You wanna be my emissary?”

“What?” Stiles asks, feeling like he has whiplash.

Derek crouches on the balls of his feet, rests his forearms over his knees, and stares at Stiles with a visible earnestness. 

“I wanted you to be my emissary, but I always figured you’d be Scott’s. If you’re not, though, you could be mine. If you want to.”

“I…” Stiles’ heart is pounding - why is his heart pounding? It should plead the fifth, it’s gonna get them both in trouble - “You always wanted that?”

“Yeah,” Derek nods, running a hand over his already mussed hair, “Just figured I’d wait a while. You’re young still. You were young when I met you - just wanted you to see your options.”

“Are… okay, are we still talking about the emissary thing?” 

Smiling handsomely again on a huffy-maybe-laugh of an exhale, Derek looks down at the ground like he’s shy, and admits, “I dunno.”

“You’re… is that - you’re waiting?” Stiles asks quietly, moving onto his knees to get closer to Derek, “Is that… I mean - is that what the routines are about? And the - the - the busy work? I mean, if you’ve been waiting to ask me to be your emissary since I was in fuckin’ high school, man, are you just sitting around, waiting for someone special? Cause -”

“I know who I’m waiting for,” Derek interrupts smoothly, meeting Stiles’ eyes with a sort of fearlessness that Stiles can only envy.

Swallowing loudly, Stiles freezes up.

Derek scents the air, and tells him roughly, “I don’t know what that means. Sometimes you smell like - wildflowers. It’s like a million different fuckin’ smells at once, and I can’t figure out what makes you smell like that.”

That’s fair, because Stiles has probably smelled this way every time he’s walked past Derek’s bookcase, or heard Derek talking to Boyd about his latest endeavor into a fictional world where the Wright Brothers weren’t brothers at all but doppelgangers fighting to escape one another, and one of them could quite literally fly. 

And he’s probably smelled like this every time Derek’s indulged the Pack in learning more about his personal history, his education, his degrees, and theoretical physics, and the space program, and every time he’s muttered ‘nice one,’ when Stiles has cracked his own back, and every time Stiles has caught him washing the Camaro even though it’s in pristine condition, and every time Derek’s taken them all on a trip to a diner five hours north for no reason, and every time he’s gotten visibly excited watching _Top Chef_.

And Derek probably knows that smell from every time Stiles has agreed with him that Scott’s being an idiot, and every time he’s found himself near the cinema on a Friday and waved at Derek as he went in alone because he just likes the experience of sitting in the theatre, and every time someone’s asked him why he won’t just give _American Idol_ a chance and Isaac has jumped to explain to whoever is inquiring that Derek has a visceral reaction to Ryan Seacrest for no discernable reason -

“It’s the, uh… it’s the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me,” Stiles confesses.

And it is.

Derek could offer him a world of waiting, of chivalry, and patience, and it would only make everything worse, because Derek is not a man for keeping. His life is inherently dangerous, he’s going to get himself killed, and all Stiles wants is for Derek to be okay, and to feel the same way Stiles does about him - that when one is near, the other will never be hurt. 

“Oh…”

“So, you knew, when, uhm -” Stiles is mortified that his eyes are watering, that his face is heating up, that his throat is tightening - he looks up and away, “ - how, when I was a kid, I just - I had such a-a crush on you. You knew. You had to have known.”

“Yeah. Figured it faded with time. Exposure to me does that, over time.”

Letting out one bitter laugh, Stiles pretends he’s not crying, and says, “yeah, well, it started as a tiny thing, just a - this little - barely even a thing, you know? And I thought if I left it alone, it’d go away, but instead it became this fucking e-enormous, colossal - it’s the most - the most - important thing in the entire fucking world, and it’s like I planted a seed in the woods somewhere, like, three years ago, and now it’s all -”

“A garden,” Derek realizes, his eyes going round in Stiles’ periphery.

Stiles wipes at his cheeks with the back of his hand, and looks down at his dirty knees, “yeah. Didn’t fade. Just changed.”

“And that’s… that’s the worst thing?”

“ _God_ ,” Stiles bemoans, scrubbing his hair with twitchy hands, “I don’t know! I didn’t think - I didn’t know I could have - not that you’ve even said you _want_ -”

Derek’s grabbing Stiles’ wrists in his big, calloused hands, then pulling them apart, and away to reveal Stiles’ face, and the contact is so sudden it makes Stiles gasp, and then Derek is folding onto his knees, so he can lean in and steal a kiss.

And Stiles feels the whole world collapse around him, the way he knew it would, but not in a bad way - it _falls_ away, like a bad dream, like Derek is all he can see, or smell, or feel, and that makes sense because Stiles has always known, that really, from the start, he has always been infinitely, permanently, unchangingly, deeply, irreversibly, a-metric-shit-ton, a straight-into-the-deep-end, completely, and maddeningly infatuated with Derek. It’s always been so gargantuan, it’s exceeded every radar, because every radar is only built to take in so much information, and it’s so massive, it’s off the fucking charts. 

Stiles makes some sort of cross of a moan, and a whimper, and he grabs at Derek’s perfect, stupid face, and he feels his fingers brush that expertly trimmed facial hair, because he’s been dying for this for years, and he thinks he can _feel_ Derek smiling against him, and it’s so different, so different to feel that beautiful smile against him instead of just seeing it, and this blossoming garden in him - it’s this unending cascade of color, and perfume, and beauty, and it’s so unknowably tremendous, it cannot be measured. 

Besides, it’s ever-expanding. 

Why measure it now when it will be infinitely larger in another minute?

Not that he'll ever admit that part out loud, but it'll be a secret he's willing to give clearance for - at least to one person.


End file.
